Panel sees gold for county in stimulus plan

Scientists, homeowners, solar-panel technicians and teenage job-seekers in San Diego County may be among the beneficiaries of the $800 billion-plus stimulus package that cleared the Senate yesterday.

That was the view of a panel of economists and business leaders at a forum organized by the San Diego Regional Economic Development Corp. and the University of San Diego.

Although some panel members expressed qualms about the size of the package – with an $838 billion price tag on the Senate version, compared with $820 billion in the House – they all said it could help revive the county's flagging economy.

“I'm for anything, including fairy dust, that somehow will help us find the bottom,” said Fred Maas, president of the Black Mountain Ranch real estate development.

One of the major parts of the stimulus program will be funding for infrastructure projects, said Marney Cox, economist for the San Diego Association of Governments.

Cox estimated that the county would get roughly $300 million to $500 million of the package's infrastructure funds, which total around $300 billion. That money, he said, could create 3,600 construction jobs in the county as well as about 2,400 peripheral jobs.

“In combination with a lot of things that are going on right now, I really believe that this could help turn the economy around,” Cox said.

Many of the projects to be funded by the stimulus package – including biotech research and green technology – seem particularly well-suited for San Diego, the panelists said.

Andrew Murphy, who heads the Building Industry Association of San Diego County, said the stimulus could help stabilize the troubled housing market and breathe new life into the construction industry.

The Senate bill includes a one-year tax credit of up to $15,000 on the purchase of any owner-occupied home. The House bill offers a $7,500 tax credit, available only on first-time home purchases and subject to income restrictions.

Either way, Murphy said, it should help stabilize the housing market, although he does not expect an immediate recovery.

“The last time Congress did that kind of tax credit, back in the mid-1970s, the market did get back on track after a year or two,” Murphy said.

Mark Cafferty, president and chief executive at the Workforce Partnership, an employment training agency, calculated that the county could expect to see between $17 million and $20 million for worker training and placement programs.

That includes $10 million to $12 million to help retrain unemployed workers for such industries as health care, infrastructure construction and green technology. Cafferty estimated that roughly $7 million to $8 million would fund after-school and summertime jobs for young people to work in community organizations, parks and recreation sites.

“The money for young people is very important because without it, youth employment will be zero this year, since so many retailers have gone out of business,” Cafferty said.

Chris Woolley, who heads the Carmel Valley-based life sciences division of North Carolina's Square 1 Bank, said that the research and development funds in the bill could help the county's biotechnology companies. Such aid is especially crucial because venture capital funding has been drying up.

The Senate bill includes $17.8 billion for scientific research and development compared with $13.2 billion in the House version, according an analysis by the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

The biggest R&D beneficiaries of the Senate version are the National Institutes of Health, which fund much of the nation's biotech research.

“San Diego is well-positioned to be a beneficiary of some of that money,” Woolley said. “The government wants to put that money to work pretty fast, and the fact that there's already an infrastructure here could be a benefit for us.”

Also included in the package is at least $2 billion in funding for alternative energy research and development.

Lisa Bicker, who heads Clean Tech San Diego, an environmental technology association, said such funding could help companies such as Sapphire Energy, a San Diego firm exploring the use of algae as fuel. And she said that the package's tax credits for energy-efficient homes could help create business for solar-panel installers and insulation workers.

“There's quite a lot of reason for optimism but quite a lot of reason for caution as well,” Bicker said.

Bicker said that she feels cautious about the future because even after the stimulus money is allocated, “there are still a lot of deals that won't get done and projects that won't get financed.”